Design

Building with Hot Melt Adhesives

The main factor for building these robots is the usage of a smart material called hot melt adhesive (HMA) for the overall robot structure. A complete functional soft robot with custom shaped limbs and joints can be built by using this material. Due to its adhesiveness, a mix of materials and items can be glued together to make a "hybrid" robot. Therefore instead of giving design outlines on how to build a single robot with HMA, we will provide the material properties and examples of HMA usage in various robot construction. In this approach, we aim to emphasize the limitless potential for building robots and expect the users to come up with their robot designs.

Tendon Module Box

We want users to build their robots in a short time and actuate them with a strong yet simple actuation system. Therefore we designed a small (3x4x5 cm) actuator module which can pull a tendon up to 11N load. This module box runs on a Li-Po battery and has a wireless unit that allows communication with a PC. The microcontroller inside the box can receive several commands to drive the DC gear motor which pulls the tendon that reaches out from the box.

Bibliography

Wang et al. (2012) Physical Connection and Disconnection Based on Hot Melt Adhesives

Wang et al. (2013) Large-Payload Climbing in Complex Vertical Environments Using Thermoplastic Adhesive Bonds

Nurzaman et al. (2013) Active Sensing System with In Situ Adjustable Sensor Morphology

Yu et al. (2014) Soft Robotics Education

Wang et al. (2014) Mechanics and energetics in tool manufacture and use: a synthetic approach

Contributors

Utku Çulha

Fabio Giardina